Recently, to further improve road traffic safety, there have been developed and proposed a variety of technologies for automated driving of a vehicle such as an automobile without manual operation of a driver. In general, during automated driving, an own vehicle automatically travels on a road in accordance with a travel route to a previously-set destination while detecting a position of the own vehicle on a road map. At that time, the travel route and the own vehicle position are displayed in real time on a monitor screen of a mounted navigation system.
Here, in a case, for example, that behaviors of the own vehicle and surrounding vehicles cannot be recognized in advance during traveling with automated driving, there may be a fear that an occupant is annoyed with uneasiness or unpleasantness. To eliminate such uneasiness or the like, there has been proposed an automated travelling vehicle that includes means to inform an occupant of a behavior to be subsequently performed by an own vehicle during automated driving in accordance with a previously-set travel plan and a behavior of another vehicle existing therearound obtained through vehicle-to-vehicle communication and the like (e.g., see Patent Literature 1).
Further, there has been known a travel state display apparatus, for an automated driving vehicle capable of switching between automated driving of a vehicle and manual driving by a driver, that displays on a screen a travel state with automated driving control for helping an occupant be ready and prepared in advance for switching to manual driving (e.g., see Patent Literature 2). In this apparatus, stability of automated driving control is displayed by an image resembling a steering wheel. Here, inclination and display area of the steering wheel are configured to be varied in accordance with a state of an own vehicle and environment information therearound.
Further, a parking support apparatus and an automated driving control system have been put to practical use for parking into a garage or parallel parking. An automated parking apparatus of the above calculates a shortest route that prevents contact with an obstacle existing between an own vehicle and a parking space and displays the route as being superimposed to an actually-taken image (e.g., see Patent Literature 3). After a driver checks the above and performs correction if required, parking with automated driving is started.